Imagining Deliberative Democracy in the Early American Republic

“Imagining Deliberative Democracy in the Early American Republic is an ambitious and critically innovative account of the social and participatory life of politics in the early nineteenth century. Sandra M. Gustafson offers a profoundly suggestive look at how the values of classical republicanism—and the culture of deliberation it inspired—could be retained within and adapted to popular democracy. The book provides a compelling account of the links between literary expression, rhetoric, and republican style in the period, while richly exploring how the experience of literature itself could promote a democratic ethics of deliberation. Gustafson’s brilliant readings powerfully resonate with the concerns of political theorists today who ask whether or not social justice can be served by the pragmatic work and procedures of democratic institutions. This is an important and original book.”

“With characteristic depth and range, Gustafson accomplishes a major rethinking of the very meaning of democracy in early nineteenth-century American culture. The book synthesizes an incredible array of political theory and praxis, and it will prove to be a major study in the field, one that will immediately affect our own deliberations about democratic culture.”

“Boldly interweaving literary and political history, Sandra Gustafson explores the roots of American pragmatism in the discourse and practice of democratic deliberation in the early republic. Stressing the irreconcilability of absolutist imperatives and deliberative self-governance, she offers both a perspective on the past and an admonition for the future. This will be an important book for literary scholars, political theorists, and American historians alike.”

“This timely book traces and attempts thereby to resuscitate the centrality of deliberative dynamics to American political and cultural life. . . . The great strengths of this book are the comprehensiveness and nuance of Gustafson’s analysis and the relevance of her project to a nation poised, then as now, on the brink of an ideological abyss; her final chapter constructs a reading praxis wherein textual representations of debate and deliberation serve to constitute a readerly subjectivity open to the experiences and needs of diverse populations—one from which all Americans, not just literary scholars and historians, can benefit. Highly recommended.”

“Sandra Gustafson’s book Imagining Deliberative Democracy in the Early American Republic is a fascinating, careful, and lucid portrait of deliberative democracy in the period 1800-39.”